The past six years have been absolutely terrible for the reputation of Boeing, long considered one of the premiere plane makers in the world and an example of American innovative excellence.
The fatal crashes of two of the company’s 737 Max commercial jets in 2018 and 2019 due to bad software grabbed headlines, along with numerous other mechanical and manufacturing mishaps. The latest headache for Boeing is happening above the stratosphere in outer space. Boeing is an aerospace company, meaning it makes planes for the atmosphere, and craft for the vacuum of outer space.
Its latest advance, the all-new Starliner space capsule, managed to get two American astronauts up to the International Space Station, but now they’re stuck. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams rode the capsule atop a rocket up to the ISS in August. But some of its thrusters malfunctioned, and the helium tanks sprung a leak. NASA decided to bring the craft home empty on September 7. This strands Wilmore and Williams in space until they can hitch a ride back to Earth in February, 2025, with the Boeing competitor SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule.
The Starliner has been beset by continuous problems, and they’re costing a lot of money. First off, NASA paid Boeing more than $4 billion to develop the craft, while Elon Musk’s SpaceX developed the Crew Dragon capsule for only $2.6 billion of taxpayer money (both companies contract with NASA). Not only that, but the project costs went over, eating up another $600 million in taxpayer money funneled through NASA, while Boeing had to ante up another $1.5 billion.
Critics say that NASA continues to work with Boeing out of little more than a sense of history and camaraderie. The problems were already evident in 2017, when the ship had to skip what was supposed to be its maiden voyage due to engineering problems. Then in 2019, Starliner’s first unmanned flight was a bust due to a software problem. An attempted do-over in 2021 was scuttled by problems with the parachutes, wiring, valves, and more. It was not until this year that the ship managed to do its actual job of transporting humans into space, and now it can’t get them home.
David Williams, writing for The Blaze, is an advocate for fewer human missions and more projects done by robots. He said policymakers need to “get their heads out of the clouds” and focus less on crewed missions and more on cheaper, safer, automated space exploration.
